I really like top down.. Plus I was hoping at one point to generate terrain in terragen then use it top down, pretty sure it has an orthographic mode.

But no I dont think it makes sense to draw landscape features from an eye level view with characters at birds eye view. Could work to download models of objects you want (e.g. trees from some of the free model sites), then take an ortho picture in some modelling software

I found a picture of a real tree online from a birds eye view. It showed enough of the branches and trunk that it could be recognized as more than a bush, which is what I was looking for/trying to create.

I then just used some sharpening effects in Paint.NET to make it fit more of the 2D game style of graphics rather than look perfectly realistic. Seems to work fine.

When people comment on using a 45º perspective, they mean to draw the sprites from that perspective from scratch, not to alter the angle as you'd do with a 3d model.

Take a look at older RPG games, or shooters like Chaos Engine, even when the gameplay is Top-Down, the sprites are given perspective to differentiate what they are:

On the other hand, you can keep the pure top-down perspective, and rather than graphically, have players infer what objects are functionally.

A tree, for example, would allow players to walk under the branches, so even when they might look like bushes from above, players would soon learn to recognize them.

An idea would be to compose trees from two sprites: The branches and the trunk. When the player is below the branches, fade out (with transparency) the sprite (or just fade out a small section where your player is), but leave the tree trunk sprite below (with actual solid collision) visible.

That way not only will it be evident what the bushy thing actually is, but it can lead to interesting gameplay effects.

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